glstewart wrote:Why didn't I think of that?! ilovetwilight, you're a genius! Jessica is mean, mean, mean on the inside and all friendly, sugar and roses on the outside, which makes her a HYPOCRITE. Mike is a lustful horn-dog on the inside, but being Bella's friend in public doesn't make him a hypocrite. If there is one thing I HATE, it's a hypocrite.

I think that sums it up nicely!

Thank you!

This is an interesting statement considering that Bella herself is an unbelievably huge hypocrite.

Auctorita wrote:This is an interesting statement considering that Bella herself is an unbelievably huge hypocrite.

How so?

Sorry for the late reply.

Here is a list of some of the times that Bella has been hypocritical:

I. Bella is appalled that Gianna would want to become a vampire when she herself planned on and did become one. The argument against this is that Bella would become a "good" vampire since she wouldn't drink human blood while Gianna would be a "bad" one for drinking human blood. However, we simply do not know enough about Gianna or her situation to know for sure that she would choose to feast on humans.

II. Bella is annoyed with her classmates' shallowness despite being a shallow person. An example of her shallowness can be found in chapter one of Twilight when she first meets both Eric an Mike. When she meets Eric she finds him to be annoying and overly helpful and later with Mike she thinks of him as a loyal puppy that follows you around everywhere but decides that he was the nicest person she had met all day. Both Mike and Eric had greeted and offered to help Bella find her classes in the same manner yet Eric is annoying and overly helpful while Mike is so nice. The only difference between Mike and Eric at this point is that Eric is described to be an oily haired chess club type compared to Mike who is attractive. Therefore, Mike is labeled as the nicer person because he is better looking. Another thing to note about Bella's impressions of these two is that while many people also create similar superficial prejudices for other people, Bella never goes beyond her initial impressions even after getting to know them. Eric is always the overly helpful chess nerd and Mike is always the sweet, loyal puppy. I'll also throw in that Bella focuses a lot on physical appearances; the evidence for this is in how many times she mentions how beautiful and flawless she thinks Edward looks (which is nearly all the time).

III. Just at the mention of Tanya Bella becomes upset or jealous and yet she thinks nothing of all the hand holding and hugging that she did with Jacob, being well aware that he was in love with her.

IV. She is greatly upset and angry with Alice for suddenly leaving in BD, thinking that Alice has abandoned them even though she did the exact same thing to Alice and Jasper when she ran off to meet James in Twilight.

V. Bella soon suspects that Jessica is only nice to her for popularity and is miffed that Jessica is only using her. Even though she takes issue to Jessica using her, she has no qualms about using Jacob for information about the Cullens in Twilight and initially in New Moon when she starts to hang out with him just to keep Charlie off her back. She even uses Jessica in New Moon for the same reasons as Jacob, but personally I found it to be more of an eye for eye thing.

VI. Like Jessica, Bella is friendly (well, Bella's version of being friendly) to her classmates and participates in their conversations and spends time with them outside of school while inwardly writing them off as boring and trivial or only pretending to be interested in their conversations/activities.----------------------------------------------Regarding Jessica's treatment of Bella, in New Moon she does agree to hang out with Bella after she had completely ditched her and everyone else for Edward in Twilight. I doubt that this was done for popularity because at this point Bella had made herself into a bit of an outcast among her peers and she wasn't really new to the school anymore so there wouldn't be much to gain out of hanging out with her. She more likely agreed to hanging out with Bella out of pity or even possibly to impress Mike, although we can't really know for sure.

I agree with Moon Sidhe that this should be taken over to the Bella post, but I'm running out of time here. You make a few valid points about Bella's less-than-stellar behavior, but I don't consider them to be hypocritical. When I have more time to get into it, I'll back up my position -- if anyone is still interested.

About Jessica agreeing to go to the movie with Bella...I don't know, maybe I'm just being cynical, but she seems to have ulterior motives to me. At this moment, I'm having a hard time articulating what they are, but her whole personality is repugnantly self-serving. She makes me sick

O.k., that was harsh...I guess I have know a few too many Jessicas in my lifetime to be more rational about her !

I agree about Jessica in that I don't think she agreed to go with Bella out of kindness or sympathy. It probably was out of pity since Bella was in her zombie state at this point but who knows she could have been just trying to impress Mike by being nice to Bella.

I really dislike how one-sided Jessica's character is now that Midnight Sun is about. Before you always knew she wasn't really Bella's friend, just in it for the popularity boost and Mike Newton, but she wasn't a constant ball of jealousy and fury. I found it extremely unrealistic, like she was a stock character from Mean Girls and not a realistic portrayal of any type of girl.

Yes, girls can be catty, and yes, there are girls out there just to use people, but even those girls have more than just black to their personality. Edward reading Jessica's thoughts could have potentially added a lot of depth to her character, but instead Meyer only made her cardboard. It really disappointed me.

Jessica's not a good person, no, but she's also a teen girl. She's got a lot of growing up to do, and a lot of insecurities, and probably a lot of reasons behind those insecurities. I'm not going to be so quick to throw her under the bus. I took her character to be a typical confused teenage girl taking it out on others. Once she finds herself a bit more and finds a place where she isn't threatened she'll grow up and even out.

I think Jessica going out with Bella in New Moon can be taken two ways: One, that Jessica isn't as much as catty girl as she acts, or two, she wanted to gloat in the fact that Bella lost Edward and was now miserable. Or maybe an uneasy, confused balance between the two.

the cops & the kids & the cats & the robbers& the stolen moments from the out of tune guitars

I agree that she's a stock character, but she was also meant to be a minor character. I'm sure that if Edward had listened to her thoughts more regularly he might have come to understand more of the reasoning behind her actions, and not only as they pertained to Bella and himself. But, this isn't a story about Jessica Stanley, so I don't really see why more pages should have been wasted on her.

You are in my blood like holy wineand you taste so bitter but you taste so sweetOh I could drink a case of you darlingAnd I would still be on my feet